The Vanishers

2014 Longlist

From the acclaimed novelist and The Believer editor Heidi Julavits, a wildly imaginative and emotionally intense novel about mothers, daughters, and the psychic damage women can inflict on one another.
Is the bond between mother and daughter unbreakable, even by death?
Julia Severn is a student at an elite institute for psychics. Her mentor, the legendary Madame Ackermann, afflicted by jealousy, refuses to pass the torch to her young disciple. Instead, she subjects Julia to the humiliation of reliving her mother’s suicide when Julia was an infant. As the two lock horns, and Julia gains power, Madame Ackermann launches a desperate psychic attack that leaves Julia the victim of a crippling ailment.

Julia retreats to a faceless job in Manhattan. But others have noted Julia’s emerging gifts, and soon she’s recruited to track down an elusive missing person-a controversial artist who might have a connection to her mother. As Julia sifts through ghosts and astral clues, everything she thought she knew of her mother is called into question, and she discovers that her ability to know the minds of others-including her own-goes far deeper than she ever imagined.

As powerful and gripping as all of Julavits’s acclaimed novels, The Vanishers is a stunning meditation on grief, female rivalry, and the furious power of a daughter’s love.

(From Publisher)

About the Author

A founding editor of The Believer magazine, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and winner of the PEN New  England Award for Literary Excellence in Fiction, Heidi Julavits is also the author of three critically acclaimed novels: The Uses of Enchantment, The Effect of Living Backwards, and The Mineral Palace.

Librarian’s Comments

A paranormal detective sotry, an affecting exposition of familial and female dynamics, and a hilarious satire of academic politics.